Fading
by Frenchiegirl
Summary: Sesshoumaru discovered too late that, for a youkai, it is better to burn out than to fade away. Lemon, SessRin Oneshot


_Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Ruminko Takahashi's Inuyasha, nor do I profit from writing this story. _

The Lord of the Western Lands was born an immortal, and immortality certainly had its benefits.

For instance, if you make a mistake, even a huge one, you have ample time to try and make up for it.

The great lord did not realize he had made a mistake at first. It took him at least a century of maturing and the slow-burn of regret revealing a hole in his heart before he even realized how much he missed her. And it took a short and disappointing tryst with a female youkai for him to admit to himself exactly why he missed her. _Her_ face kept popping into his head, unbidden, as he a mounted the aroused female. _Her_ scent came to mind as the acrid smell of the female's arousal rose up to meet his flaring nostrils. It sickened him, the smell of the one underneath him because she was so unlike Rin. He pushed the female away and carefully pulled his clothes back into place while ignoring her accusations and growls. He walked away, shaking his head in attempt to eliminate to the unpleasant scent which hovered persistently just under his nose like some annoying insect.

So he passed the next four hundred and twenty seven years in abstinence.

When he found her, he was well-versed in the ways of human courtship. He invited her to a coffee shop, where he sat and watched her with his still unreadable eyes as she drank two decaffeinated cappuccinos. He drank nothing, but she did not notice. She talked and he listened eagerly for the familiar chirping tones in her voice that he remembered from so long ago. He had trouble determining if her voice was the same, or if he only willed it so.

If he would have known such memories would become precious to him, he would have pressed them deeply into the folds of his mind. As it was now, the details evaded his grasp and all he had to go on were his instincts. Those left no doubt that this was her reincarnation.

There were many differences. This Rin was bolder, and had brushed her hand against his several times. She attempted to flirt, cutting her eyes at him, as the evening grew long. He caught a whiff of arousal on the second night after trailed his fingertips along her back while helping her out of her coat.

This was a good thing, since after four hundred years, he was getting a bit frustrated. Sexual frustration tends to make it difficult to establish a deeper relationship before caving to the urge to 'get into her pants' as the modern saying went. Typically, this was a problem of younger men. But Sesshoumaru was a young man no longer and it was doubtful if his situation or actions could even be translated into human terms.

However, there existed many similarities, such as how the reincarnation, who did not know she was a reincarnation, realized that the tall, silver haired man was about to make a move on her. She did not realize that beneath his impeccable manners, magical guise and subtle domestication, a powerful demon still lay hidden, or obscured by time, Sesshoumaru was never sure which. She thought him well-preserved and any wildness she sensed hidden beneath the layers of years, she chalked up to a mid-life crisis.

Despite her mundane observations, she was not unaffected by him. He was ethereal, like some sort of beautiful, pale ghost. She had never met anyone like him and still he seemed familiar. That familiarity made her feel strange, even sad. She was not sure why this was so, but the feral glint to his near-yellow eyes aroused her and encouraged her to push aside any niggling doubts. She invited him up to her apartment. He kissed her as soon as she had snapped the door lock into place.

He was on her swiftly, his hands moving over her body like quicksilver. After a brief hesitation, she responded in kind. She was not a virgin and her responses were a woman's responses. What she lacked in years, she made up for in experience.

She leaned into him once she was naked and vulnerable, eagerly pressing his large, roughened hands against the soft flesh between her legs. "Greedy bitch," he growled to himself, realizing that the Rin in his memory would never act so brazenly, but he was beyond caring. She smelled like Rin, exactly as he remembered, and that was all that mattered at the moment.

He flipped her over and whispered against her neck, "I've wanted you like this." Within seconds he was arching into her, his breathing labored. He braced his arm underneath and pulled her close. If she had known him at all, she might have been surprised as he gasped little gasps against her hair and neck. She clasped her legs tightly around him, bringing him to the brink of something almost painful in its intensity.

He remembered the Rin of before and how he had dreamed many times of taking her like this, his eyes red with passion. His nails pricked the girl's flesh and left thin streaks of red flowing down her hips.

"Rin, Rin," he breathed as he thought of her, so long past. And now he had her. She was his. He was erasing his mistake. She was his. He crushed her to him as the adrenaline of his climax flowed through his veins like sweet wine.

"Akiko," her voice startled him out of a dream-like state he had fallen into after having collapsed wearily against her bare shoulder, his claws buried in her dark hair. "My name is Akiko," she said sleepily, her face lax and her eyes closed, "not Rin."

After five hundred years of longing, it was not easy to let go of a dream, even if you had let go of the little human years ago. The thought that you might be able to change things, change yourself, change time, change mistakes, that thought was not as easy to let go, not when there were countless centuries marching relentlessly before you, mocking you and bearing an unchanging, unyielding future. He was as helpless to alter the flow of time as any mortal. He was destined from birth to fade, watching as his life was gradually overwhelmed by the sands of time.

He rolled over and away from the girl, the sometime reincarnation, and nursed his regret, sealing it tightly inside heart, since at least he had that. _Yes that. _

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AN: Thanks for reading. Please review and let me know if you enjoyed this or if you would like to see more of my writing. Also, if you spot any grammatical errors, please refer to them specifically in the review so that I might make the appropriate changes. Other forms of concrit welcome since this is kind of an experiment. Let me know if it works, or if you think I should try something else.


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